Outside the Beltway

The long-overdue redesign of OTB is now live.

From the F.B.I. on down, there were multiple warnings that could have prevented Wednesday’s tragedy in Parkland, Florida.

A significant and important development in the Russia investigation that shows that President Trump’s claim that the stories of Russian interference in the 2016 election were “Fake News” is completely untrue.

More security clearance problems for the White House.

To the surprise of nobody, Mitt Romney entered the race to succeed Orrin Hatch in the Senate. He’ll probably win.

Intelligence officials are warning that the Russians are set to seek to influence the 2018 elections just as they did in 2016. Despite this, the Trump Administration refuses to acknowledge this publicly while the President seeks to undermine the investigation into past Russian interference.

Friday’s eight-hour shutdown was not the non-event it seemed from the outside.

Administration officials are admitting that it’s likely that Russia will try to interfere in the midterm elections just as it did in 2016, but they don’t seem inclined to do anything about it.

The rise of ‘car sharing’ services has greatly benefitted consumers but had a devastating effect on taxi drivers.

Dodge is facing controversy this morning for using the words of Martin Luther King Jr. in a Super Bowl commercial, but they’re not the only party who may have some questions to answer.

The 2008 Republican nominee for president condemned his party and its president for the release of a controversial memo attacking the FBI.

Once again, President Trump is going soft on Russia. Why? I’ll leave that up to the reader to decide.

Do yourself a favor and skip the State Of The Union Address tonight. You won’t be missing anything important.

That “Romney for Senate” campaign seems pretty much inevitable.

Fortunately, yesterday’s missile alert in Hawaii was a false alarm. However, it is raising questions about the early warning system that’s in place and the state’s preparedness in case of an actual attack.

If you can’t beat a dead horse on a blog, where can you?

Donald Trumps’ tweets are the public statements of the President of the United States. This makes them noteworthy and often important.

Donald Trump’s latest Twitter rant is one of his most bizarre.

Anti-government protests are spreading in Iran.

Two months after a referendum that supported independence from Spain, Catalan voters head to the polls for a new round of parliamentary elections that remain up in the air.

A Trump judicial nominee who could not answer basic legal questions in a hearing last week has withdrawn his nomination, but this is likely to happen again unless the Administration fixes some obvious flaws in its selection process.

Yesterday was the seventy-sixth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. For most Americans, though, it was just another day. That’s only natural.

A fitting honor for women who have brought to light an issue that was swept under the rug for far too long.

A seventh woman has come forward to accuse Senator Al Franken of having groped her as calls mount from his Democratic colleagues for him to resign.

A not guilty verdict in a case that Donald Trump turned into a political issue.

For the second time in as many months, a Federal Court is blocking the Administration’s ban on transgender troops in the military.

After more than thirty years in power, Robert Mugabe is on his way out in Zimbabwe, but that doesn’t mean things will improve.

There’s growing evidence that Donald Trump’s tweets are hurting him but his aides have basically given up trying to control his Twitter habit.

No, we don’t have to presume that Roy Moore is “innocent until proven guilty.”

New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand says Bill Clinton should have resigned over his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Raising the question of just how stringently we should apply the standards of today to the events of the past.

It appears Russia attempted to influence last year’s Brexit vote in the same manner it did the 2016 election in the United States.

Since taking office, President Trump has made an average of 5.5 false claims per day.

Roy Moore’s most die-hard defenders are living in a world of their own, and it’s unlikely they’ll change their minds.

As a candidate, Donald Trump liked to claim that he only hired the “top people.” and said he would do the same thing as President. So far, it isn’t working out that way.

Democrats, Republicans, and Independents came out for an an election that can only been seen as a strong rebuke to President Trump and the Republican Party.

It’s been two years since John Boehner stepped down as Speaker, and he’s got a few things to say about his former colleagues and the state of American politics.

Squirrel!

The capital of the purported caliphate declared by ISIS has apparently fallen, but that doesn’t mean the end of ISIS. In fact, it may make the group more dangerous.

Vice-President Pence left an Indianapolis Colts game early in what was obviously a cynical pre-planned publicity stunt.

In other news, this week we learned that AIM still exists.

Stephen Paddock’s crime was clearly terrorizing, and will impact the lives of survivors, families, first responders in many ways for a long time. Based on the currently available evidence, though, the Las Vegas shooting was not “terrorism.”

Catalonia’s independence referendum is one day away, and nobody seems to know what to expect.

Some more interesting post-election commentary from Hillary Clinton.

Senate Republicans are considering one more last-ditch effort to ‘repeal and replace’ the Affordable Care Act.

Hillary Clinton has found another group to blame for her loss, educated white married women in suburbia.

Despite pleas from conservative lawmakers, the Dept. of Justice will not reopen the case against former I.R.S. official Lois Lerner.

Hillary Clinton’s latest memoir lashes out at those to blame for her unexpected loss.